My Main Mother

“My Main Mother” is a novel about growing up. Without a father. With a mother who is beautiful, promiscuous, avidly ambitious. In a small town in Maine. In the human jungle of New York. Growing up defiant and scared, happy and torn up. Growing up black. And growing up human. It is, quite simply, one of the most remarkable novels of the 1960s, and Barry Beckham's first at age 25 to start his distinguished career.

“The scenes of Harlem, of how it feels to be a black getting a flat tire on Times Square, of encountering a homosexual in the Village, of street gangs and boarding houses, of the ironies of racism, are fantastically vivid and compelling.”
-The New York Times